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what's the biggest gamble in the world
what's the biggest gamble in the world - win
Racketeer Vadim Trincher is under house arrest in Trump Tower. He pleaded guilty in '13 to running what a federal prosecutor called “one of the biggest bookmaking operations in the world,” which laundered approximately 100 mill in gambling proceeds.
There is no silver short squeeze happening. NONE. NEVER.
Silver might go up nicely and for a time but don't get high on hopium, this is not gonna go in the 100s.
https://twitter.com/michaeljburry/status/1356111612759789568 A corner in the silver market has been tried before - and let's be clear, that is what is being attempted now. In 1980, a rule change by the government destroyed the corner. #silverthursday.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Silver-Thursday Silver Thursday, the dramatic fall in the price of silver on March 27, 1980, following the Hunt brothers’ attempt to corner the market on the metal.
Apart from a handful of reigning monarchs and despots, Nelson Bunker Hunt (1926–2014) was the richest man in the world at the start of the 1960s. Like his father, the legendary oilman H. L. Hunt, Bunker gambled big and got lucky. By 1970, although his wealth was accumulating faster than he could spend it, he foresaw a volatile economic future. Prevented by Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 prohibition on U.S. citizens owning gold, Bunker and his younger brother William Herbert (b. 1929) chose silver, then standing at $1.50 per ounce, as their speculative hedge. Their initial caution vanished after Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi nationalized the Bunkers’ Libyan oil fields in 1973. Furious, and paranoid that paper money would soon be worthless, the Hunt brothers then bought futures contracts on 55 million ounces of silver, eventually accumulating an estimated 100 million ounces of the precious metal. But instead of selling the contracts like normal commodity traders, they took delivery of the bullion and chartered three Boeing 707s to air-freight it to Switzerland.
By 1979, they had engineered a genuine shortage of the metal. The Hunts owned $4.5 billion-worth of shiny, glittering silver, safely stashed in Swiss vaults. Still the price climbed, until on January 17, 1980, an ounce cost $49.45. Such rampant speculation and profits triggered new government oversight, prompting the Federal Reserve to suspend trading in silver. The boom was suddenly over, but the Hunts still had to honour contracts to buy at prices over $50. The day the market plunged—March 27—silver fell to $10.80, the metal’s biggest single collapse. Upon losing some $1.7 billion, prompting Bunker to quip, “A billion dollars isn’t what it used to be,” the Hunts had become the (then) greatest debtors in financial history, and though New York banks allowed them $1.1 billion credit towards clearing their obligations, they were personally bankrupted and later convicted of illegally trying to corner the market on the precious metal; the brothers were fined $10 million each, in addition to the millions they owed to the IRS, and banned from future trading on the commodities market. The Hunts had gambled that silver was undervalued, but they failed because they had made the price of silver too attractive for its own good.
To pay off his staggering debt, Bunker was forced to sell off his beloved stable of thoroughbred horses, three of whom were named Extravagant, Goofed, and Overdrawn. William Herbert remained a billionaire into the 21st century. The character of J. R. Ewing in the original TV series Dallas (1978–91) and the Duke Brothers in the movie Trading Places (1983) all drew inspiration from the Hunt family and their larger-than-life careers and personalities.
submitted by MarioBuzo to wallstreetbets [link] [comments]
We need to talk about NOK
| Feb 4, mid-market: Thank you everyone for your support. I really don't know what to say. The company keeps getting pounded because GME is having a sell-off, which doesn't make any sense. But that's the market for you. It doesn't always make sense. I still believe 2021 will be a big year for Nokia, although it doesn't look like there is any way we'll manage the crazy play anymore. Still, it was nice to see something that was impossible become possible, even if it was for only a few days. And remember, we can still do it any day. All it takes is for us to work together. If you want. Make up your own mind. I'm still holding. NOK will recover from this. Fair value is at least 4.81, and way more when 5G really gets going. So if you can, I would buy some more now. You'll thank me later for the tip. It may not be the most exciting play, but it is what investing is all about. Slow and steady growth that compounds to make a big change. One of these days I'll be able to post again, when the mods lift the restrictions on new posts and things get a little less crazy around here. When I post again about NOK, I'll post the link here too. Thanks everyone! Feb 4 premarket: Earnings out! They beat expectations a bit, their revenue was a little smaller than expected. Overall, good quarter, good year. Here it is: https://www.nokia.com/system/files/2021-02/nokia_results_2020_q4.pdf Feb 2, end of day: It's getting pretty crazy out there, but here's what you should know. The NOK chart is following the GME chart. It's got way more shares so the bumps and dips are more stable, but that's the main trend. What that means: GME has no underlying value at this level. It is a gamble on the short squeeze. It might pay off, or it might not. If people panic sell like yesterday, it won't. NOK is very different. It has underlying value. So if someone dumps it below its target price, the best thing to do is just to buy and wait for the value to go down. Thursday NOK reveals its earnings, and they are likely to be good based on what Ericsson revealed. Ericsson is one of its main competitors and a very similar company currently trading at twice the NOK price. Feb 1, end of day: Told you it was a value share! Still trading at target, still low risk. Either dumping has stopped, or normies are piling in because of the results. Either way good news, hope you made some money today!Vol today 190m, still way above average. Normal average 30m before we changed it lol. That means since Wednesday over 2bn shares have changed hands. Hope you got em! Ericsson (NOK competitor) results suggest NOK will report good numbers this week, NOK upped to BUY on market watch: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/nokia-upped-to-buy-after-ericsson-results-2021-02-01 Unless my math is retarded (which it is cos ahmsodumb), if everyone (7m) on this sub spends $3000 at current price ($4.55) we BUY THE FLOAT. The more they keep dumping, the more shares we get cheap. Think about it.EDIT: buying the ENTIRE float is NOT the point of this play. I know share price goes up when supply is restricted, just read the play. This is just an example of what happens when they dump a value share on millions of retail investors. BLACKROCK IS IN PEOPLE: https://fintel.io/so/us/nok/blackrock Robin hood increases NOK allowance to 2000 shares for next week (still any allowance is CRAZY because it's a VALUE SHARE THAT HASN'T BUBBLED) https://robinhood.com/us/en/support/articles/changes-due-to-recent-market-volatility/?fbclid=IwAR2SK9VQOI_eBgBF0SK4-R1eQjBkSAe3sd6KMwSBaCPmz38e5cc8siRdhEY You dump a VALUE STOCK on me and think I'm in danger? Added new summary (30 Jan), and Q&A. FIRST OFF: This post is not financial advice or anything except the rant of some idiot retard who is an idiot. I tell you straight up that there is a normal investment side to the NOK play (STILL MEANS RISK, which YOU will have to decide!) and that there is a CRAZY side that is PROBABLY IMPOSSIBLE. If you want to play the crazy play then you’re also a crazy retard idiot just like me. I don’t know shit, I just look at graphs and go WOW. Do your own due diligence, I am not a financial advisor. Don’t ask me if you should buy, I don’t know, can you afford to? Are you comfortable with the risks? I don’t know these things. You do. NOK PLAY: Here’s how it works. YOU DECIDE if you want to take part. 1.It’s not a short squeeze like GME. Get that out of your head. 2.It’s a value/momentum play. The value part is just normal granny&grampa investing. See a good company going cheap, buy and hold. Tell your mom, dad, granny and grampa, cousins, relatives, friends. 3.The momentum part is the crazy part, and if it works the share will SKYROCKET as long as YOU DON’T SELL. GME is the biggest short squeeze in history, the NOK play could be the biggest value buy in history. - The beauty of it is that it works because Wall St is dumping NOK irrationally. That’s why the price is going down (slowly). They think they’re attacking us and slowly winning, but they’re giving us a value share cheap = their money, our pockets. By the time they realize what we did, it will be too late.
- Don’t panic, and keep buying the dumps (if you think the company has value), and if we hold the line you could see a miracle.
3310 HANDS Value Part (crazy part in Q&A): The company is healthy, has good financials, it’s a market leader in 5G (it’s main competitors are Huawei and Ericsson, they have about the same market share share of 5G) a lot of potential to be the company that builds 5G for a large part of the world. NOK is currently trading at a standard price for the value it holds. It is not a bubble. Here’s Nokia’s 5G contracts: https://www.nokia.com/networks/5g/5g-contracts/ Here’s Bloomberg shitting bricks that we’ve realized that Nokia is a value bet: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-28/gamestop-may-be-a-reddit-wallstreetbets-game-but-nokia-sure-isn-t Nokia also just unveiled new 1tb tech, the thing AFTER 5G. First on the world. They have it, they’re showing the world it works. Here is their press release from Wednesday: https://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/nokia-and-elisa-push-network-boundaries-with-worlds-first-1t-deployment-2021-01-27 They are so trusted that NASA got them to build a cell network on the MOON. Literally. If you’re NASA, would you hire your retard uncle Earl to build cell towers on the moon? No, you hire someone who CAN ACTUALLY DO IT. Imagine what it takes to build something really big and complicated on the moon? Now imagine who’s the likely guy who can do it. That’s right, NOKIA. Here they are, going to the moon: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/10/19/nokia-selected-by-nasa-to-build-first-ever-cellular-network-on-the-moon/ If the Huawei 5G war continues, who do you think US and Europe is going to back, especially since NOK already has the next tech, owns a bunch of patents, is from FINLAND that has never tried to take over the world and has a brand that EVERYONE who lived in 2000s remembers? Here’s a guy who’s been doing the numbers for a while now in case you want to see them: https://www.reddit.com/useJimming/comments/l7f6ua/part_iv_option_chain_analysis_on_nok_and_why_you/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf I don’t know him, I don’t know the numbers as well, but looks pretty good to me. Amazing due diligence. But what do I know, I’m an idiot. So is he. So are you. We’re all fucking retards, just ask Wall Street. I poked myself in the same eye twice yesterday. We’re “dumb money”. They have other names for us too. So, worst case, you just bought into a good company at a fair value. If the crazy play doesn’t work, you just hold on to them and let them become the world leader in 5G. Unlike GME (NOT SAYING SELL!), NOK will not fall 99%. Or if it does, I'M BUYING THAT SHIT because if a HEALTHY COMPANY FALLS 99% you make some CRAZY MONEY on that when it bounces back. Q&A Q: You retards were tricked by bots to buying NOK, there’s no short A: This just full on doesn’t get what the play is about. IT IS NOT A SHORT SQUEEZE. THIS IS NOT GME RINSE REPEAT. GME IS A DIFFERENT PLAY. NOK IS A VALUE PLAY. How many more ways can I say it? Not sure. How many more do I have to? Q: Stop taking attention away from GME you retards A: Nobody is saying sell your GME. Nobody is saying that. GME is too expensive for a lot of people, and GME is VERY RISKY and NOK has genuine value behind it. If the NOK play works, those people who couldn’t afford GME can still get on & get rich. If it doesn’t, they most likely still make money on a good company. Q: This play is impossible / crazy / it’ll never work / there are too many shares you retards A: This is ALMOST true. This play WAS impossible until 1/27/2021. That is why nobody has EVER tried anything like this. But it’s NOT impossible anymore. Look at this graph. Look at it. See that spike? What the fuck is that? I’ll tell you my fellow autistic space boot packin 3310 using NOKSTER. https://preview.redd.it/v473xl00ghe61.png?width=2182&format=png&auto=webp&s=bf5aac455156dbadb919b80afacb5232af0a05b5 That spike was them running out of shares for half an hour. Trade was stopped until they could find more, to avoid an artificial spike in the price. Proof? Look at the volumes. A small sale (red) causes a small dip. Two small buys cause a MASSIVE SPIKE. They ran out, and had to call their friends to liquidate more shares so the price wouldn’t skyrocket "artificially". But that’s IMPOSSIBLE for NOK. NOK has 5bn shares. Nokia should be much more stable because it has so many shares, having a crazy demand spike is crazy. I saw it, and fell off my chair and since I’m such a retard it took me an hour to get back up. So it was impossible, and that’s why Wall Street won’t see it coming. They think this is their attack and they’re about to break through our ranks, but they’re actually playing right into our hands. Wendnesday, we moved 1bn shares. Thursday, when nobody could buy, we still moved 500m. Yesterday, we still moved 360m. We’ve moved so much NOK in the past three days, the average volume of the share has MORE THAN DOUBLED in THREE DAYS. The play is not impossible anymore, but Wall St thinks it is, which is how we can use their own strength and mass against them. But the value buy still makes sense WHENEVER you see someone dump a valuable share. Someone sells you a 100$ bill for 90$? Buy it. They attack? We absorb. They dump, we buy, they run out of shares, we hold. They’re fucked, and they just handed us a bunch of value shares at an undervalue = they just gave us their money. They are just giving it to you. When they realize they can’t buy them back at a lower value, what do you think is going to happen? Q: We don’t do value plays, we do short squeezes you retards A: Go back to April. Look at u/DeepFuckingValue’s position. GME was a value play. It’s only in April that the Short Squeeze became possible. Look it up yourself. Will a short squeeze also happen with NOK? It’s unlikely. Hedge Fund Assholes have been increasing their shorts in NOK in the last few days, but they won’t go over 100% on 5bn shares because they're not as stupid as me. But it doesn’t have to happen. We just need to buy the dumps. If they short, great. More money for us as long as we don’t let them drive the price down with the dumps. Q: Why is NOK not rocketing? A: Because Wall Street is dumping, just like I said they would after the Wednesday spike. That’s the whole plan. They dump, we hold the line, buy the dumps and keep the price steady. The GME short squeeze guys waited for this for UP TO TWO YEARS. I saw it in April. I thought it was crazy. I didn’t jump in back then. If I did, I’d have about as much money as u/DeepFuckingValue. On a value share, you can afford to wait. GME was originally a value play. That’s what I should have realized in April. SO JUST WAIT AND HOLD (if you believe and idiot like me, which you shouldn't, no need to message me about it). It’s been two days since this play even became possible. Q: How do we know it’s working? A: Look at the volume of shares traded. Nokia has 5bn shares. In the last three days, nearly 2bn have been traded. The price is still up from last week. That’s how. This has already been a giant dumping campaign. How come the price hasn’t floored? What happens if we just buy it all up? What happens if they run out, and then their shorts blow, the price bumps up, CNBC tells the world we broke another short wall, everyone piles on, Wall Street realizes they just gave us their shares at an undervalue and try to buy back, we don’t sell, we have all the shares? The Wednesday spike is what happens, except this time there is no stopping it. If they stop trading again and try to dump some more, you just buy up the dump and keep the spike going. Spike stops being a spike and becomes a floor. Q: Where will this max out and when? A: What do you think I’m from the future? I just saw an impossible thing happen on Wednesday, and we need to make it happen again. Look at the graph. Look at it. Set your targets to $3310, that should do it. Q: When should I buy? What should I buy? Should I buy? A: Be your own person. Buy when you feel like it, if you feel like it. Q: Wall street bots are promoting NOK. A: I don’t give a shit. If they are, and we keep buying, they are promoting giving us money. Part 2: (29 Jan) First off, much as I appreciate the love, I can’t play your hand for you. You have to make your own decisions. Do I know where NOK is going to be tomorrow? Nope. Nobody does. All that I have for you is the news from Wednesday that this play is no longer totally impossible: - I think the assholes are going to try to dump you out of the market
- It won’t work if we keep the demand up.
- The way we keep demand up is we buy, and others will follow us because the company is good.
- When they realize it won’t work, they’ll need to start buying back in.
- Then it’ll be too late, cos they dumped their shares on US and we are RETARDS who HOLD. That means that when their shorts start to go bust, the price will jump up (a little bit, not like with GME at first – this is a different play based on the health of the company, not a straight up short squeeze. The short position on NOK is much smaller).
- When the price jumps up, and the GME guys start cashing out, they need somewhere to put that cash. Some of them pay off student loans, or buy cars or whatever, but the smart ones will go NOK.
How you play it is up to you. I can’t tell you if you should buy, what minute to buy, what app to use and so on. All I can say is I buy the dumps. You need to decide for yourself if you want to do it. You can see the dumps on any app, or even yahoo finance. I buy NOK on NYSE, and I buy straight up shares (so they can’t lend out mine for shorts) but you’re free to do what you want. I’m a retard, you’re a retard, we’re all autistic fucks, we make up our own mind and stick with it. Secondly, what I said yesterday morning would happen, did happen. And it happened exactly like I said it would. So don’t get scared off, just buy the dumps. And they know that they’ll be fucked if we keep buying the dumps. That’s why they stopped us from buying NOK. NOK hasn’t bubbled, stopping us from buying NOK was because they know we’re on to them. They know the dumps won’t work if we JUST KEEP BUYING and HOLDING. The play works, they’re scared, we caught them with their pants down, they’re trying to get ahead of us. OK, so about what happened yesterday with RH and others. I’m so fucking angry about this. What RH and others did is completely insane. Their argument is “you guys are throwing your money away on a bubble, we’re just protecting you”. Bullshit. I won’t comment on GME, I’ll let u/DeepFuckingValue or one of those guys do that. I’ll just say, that short squeezes happen with hedge funds all the fucking time. Why is trading not stopped for them? They have people’s fucking pensions that they’re playing with. But for NOK, it’s TOTAL BULLSHIT. Here’s why: - NOK HAS NOT BUBBLED. Look at the graph. Look at it. It is still down from 2016. NOK is well within normal variation. Long term, you barely see the spike from a couple of days ago. There is nothing to “protect us” from. They’re protecting themselves.
- The NOK play is not a straight up short squeeze. The play is HELPED by the shorts that are there, as long as we can keep the demand up and keep the price up against the dumping, but that’s all.
- NOK is a healthy company, with new and important tech, a great brand, a lot of potential. You want to see why, read the original post. ANYONE who sees a company like that being dumped for NO REASON would buy. So should you. They are only dumping it because they’re trying to fuck up our play.
Ok that’s enough for now. I’ll see you all when I’ve got my space boots on, in my house on the FUCKING MOON, next to a NOKIA Comms tower, or I’ll see you in VALHALLA with my broke ass. If this doesn’t work, then at least you TOOK ON THE MOTHERFUCKERS and EARNED A PLACE at the table with FUCKING ODIN. UNBREAKABLE 3310! ORIGINAL POST (28 Jan): I get it, it’s not the play. I’m not saying sell your GME. I’m not a bot or a spy or a wall street asshole. I’m a regular guy who’s got a couple of bucks in his bank account and plays videogames and wants a fucking house to live in like my parents had when they were young. If you don’t agree with me, just say so. I’m also not a financial advisor, so make up your own minds you autistic fucks. But, BUT, yesterday we did something they’ve never seen. Yesterday, we made them run out of NOK shares. That’s what that big spike was, and that’s why trading was stopped for 2h. If we keep doing that, it will be the biggest wall street wealth transfer from assholes to retards in history. Because they will keep dumping it until it’s too late. Impossible, you say. Too many shares, you say. Well listen up. Yesterday, in ONE DAY, we traded, or caused others to trade, 1bn shares of Nokia. That is 1/5 of all the Nokia shares in the world. That’s never happened, EVER. Not even when Nokia was the biggest phone company in the world. 3516.16% of average trading volume. Do you get it? They’ll keep dumping their stock, we keep buying them cheap, and then they won’t be so cheap anymore when they try to buy back in. We can move 1bn shares IN A DAY. ONE DAY. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Why do they stop trading in NYSE? Cos they ran out of shares temporarily and they don’t want “artificial” spikes in the prices. So they made us retards wait a couple of hours while some assholes called some other assholes to unload their shares into the market, and once they had enough, they started again. That’s why that spike went down right after the freeze. But then we did it again. And they had to stop again. The price just wouldn’t go down. The assholes who’d just unloaded shares were probably back on the phone with the other assholes who’d convinced them. Everyone is watching us. What we do, millions of normal folks do with us, and every wallstreet asshole does against us. What did the asshole brigade do? They started shorting NOK. They will continue to do that, because they think we’re retards (they are correct). But how come the price didn’t go down? It’s got 5bn shares, and everyone whos ever held it was dumping it. How could we ever keep up the demand when there are so many shares out there? How is this going to work? Because the retard brigade was buying it. There’s 3m of us and counting. If we each put 600 bucks on NOK, we get 100 shares, and that’s 300m shares. Now imagine what happens if we put 6000 on it. AND. FUCKING. HOLD. And every dip you see, you buy more. AND. FUCKING. HOLD. They'll keep dumping, we keep buying, until they realize the price isn't going down. Then they start buying, we keep holding, the market runs out of NOK. Price skyrockets. And normies outside were following us. They can see that the stock is still LOW, lower than 2016. This means they don’t think it’s a bubble that’s going to crash on them. So why do the normies follow us on this, and not on GME? (I’m not saying sell GME). Because GME has never, ever been anywhere near where it is now. That scares a normal guy who’s just trying to put in some savings for his family. They think this is some Dutch tulip market shit. Not so with NOK. Even with the spike from yesterday, NOK is still DOWN from 2016. Remember 2016? Remember that being a really big year for Nokia? No, me neither. And let’s not even get started on where it has been in the past. Yesterday's spike barely shows on the graph. You know what is going to be a big year? 2021 and 2022. Why? What else did NOK say yesterday? Well, they revealed that they have a new kind of 1 terabit data transfer networks shit, what do I know, I’m not a techie. But it IS a new kind of technology that’s going to kick 5Gs ass. And my fellow retards of the most honorable retard brigade – Do you think we’re going to need more data this year than last year? Remember how Netflix had to downgrade its picture quality in March because the networks couldn’t handle the amount people were streaming? What do you think is going to happen with the company that solves that? But why would NOK be the company? Well, remember the 5G war with China? US and Europe can’t buy 5G from China, because then China has our networks. But guess who US and Europe aren’t afraid of? Fucking FINLAND. Finland, the land of NOKIA. So tiny that some people think the whole country is a conspiracy theory and doesn’t really exist. Sorry Finnish people, nobody gives a shit about you. Good thing for you, cos you get to build the 5G network on the moon and shit because nobody is scared that Finland will take over the world. Want proof? They are literally building one on the FUCKING MOON: https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2020/10/19/nokia-selected-by-nasa-to-build-first-ever-cellular-network-on-the-moon/ And we’re going to send them there. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 But hang on, why is NOK so low in the first place if it’s so great? Answer: because Microsoft fucked them. That’s right, they sent one of their own assholes to infiltrate the NOK, leak a bunch shit to drive the share price down, and then buy the phone part of the company. These assholes wrecked the company, the Finnish economy, and every middle class shareholder who was just trying to put their kids to college. Imagine everyone who’d be fucked if someone did that to Apple now. Worked like a charm. Firesale. Business restructuring. Lost their phones. NOK never recovered. The asshole they sent from Microsoft? Went back to work for Microsoft, and was paid a shit ton of money for what he did. His name is Stephen Elop. Look it up. So they have tech that nobody else has and a brand that everyone recognizes. But what don’t they have? Money. That’s why they’re building this 1tb magic network thing in tiny fucking possibly fake Finland to show everyone it works. But if we drive the share price up, do you think that’s going to change? So FUCK IT. I’m in for every penny, and I am HOLDING. I’ll see you in my house ON the MOON next to a NOKIA Comms tower, or I’ll see you in VALHALLA you BEAUTIFUL RETARDED MOTHERFUCKERS. TL;DR: NOK is literally going to the moon. Go there with them. 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 submitted by Mullernuller to wallstreetbets [link] [comments] |
Timeline of Trump's Russia Connections from KGB Cultivation to United State President
The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence.
Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have deep ties to Donald Trump is deeply disturbing.
Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
According to an ex-KGB spy...Russia has been cultivating Trump as an asset for 40 years.
Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump
real estate to launder money.
In 1984, David Bogatin —
a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of
Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting.
Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob.
“During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built,
as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers.
In 1987,
the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider business prospects.
A short while later he made his first call for the dismantling of the NATO alliance. Which would benefit Russia.
At the beginning of 1990 Donald Trump owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with $800 million personally guaranteed by his own assets, according to Alan Pomerantz, a lawyer whose team led negotiations between Trump and 72 banks to restructure Trump’s loans. Pomerantz was hired by Citibank.
Interview with Pomerantz Trump agreed to pay the bond lenders 14% interest, roughly 50% more than he had projected, to raise $675 million. It was the biggest gamble of his career. Trump could not keep pace with his debts. Six months later, the Taj defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin.
In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy.
So he bankrupted a casino? What about Ru...
The Trump Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half of operation in the early 1990s,
according to the IRS in a 1998 settlement agreement.
The casino repeatedly failed to properly report gamblers who cashed out $10,000 or more in a single day, the government said."The violations date back to a time when the Taj Mahal was the preferred gambling spot for Russian mobsters living in Brooklyn, according to federal investigators who tracked organized crime in New York City. They also occurred at a time when the Taj Mahal casino was short on cash and on the verge of bankruptcy." ....ssia
So by the mid 1990s Trump was then at a low point of his career. He defaulted on his debts to a number of large Wall Street banks and was overleveraged. Two of his businesses had declared bankruptcy, the Trump Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City and the Plaza Hotel in New York, and the money pit that was the Trump Shuttle went out of business in 1992. Trump companies would ultimately declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy two more times.
Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through
Deutsche Bank.
The
extremely controversial Deutsche Bank. The
Nazi financing,
Auschwitz building,
law violating,
customer misleading,
international currency markets manipulating,
interest rate rigging,
Iran &
others sanctions violating,
Russian money laundering, salvation of Donald J. Trump.
The
agreeing to a $7.2 billion settlement with with the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale and pooling of toxic mortgage securities and causing the 2008 financial crisis bank.
The
appears to have facilitated more than half of the $2 trillion of suspicious transactions that were flagged to the U.S. government over nearly two decades bank.
The
embroiled in a $20b money-laundering operation, dubbed the Global Laundromat. The launders money for Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB and its main successor, the FSB bank.
That bank.
Three minute video detailing Trump's debts and relationship with Deutsche Bank In 1998,
Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country’s oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin,
Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet.
Directly across the street from the United Nations building.
Russian Linked-Deutsche Bank arranged to lend hundreds of millions of dollars to finance Trump’s construction of a skyscraper next to the United Nations.
Construction got underway in 1999.
Units on the tower’s priciest floors were quickly snatched up by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia.
“We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” sales agent Debra Stotts told Bloomberg. After Trump World Tower opened, Sotheby’s International Realty teamed up with a Russian real estate company to make a big sales push for the property in Russia. The “tower full of oligarchs,” as Bloomberg called it, became a model for Trump’s projects going forward. All he needed to do, it seemed, was slap the Trump name on a big building, and high-dollar customers from Russia and the former Soviet republics were guaranteed to come rushing in.
New York City real estate broker Dolly Lenz told USA TODAY she sold about 65 condos in Trump World at 845 U.N. Plaza in Manhattan to Russian investors, many of whom sought personal meetings with Trump for his business expertise.
“I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “They all wanted to meet Donald. They became very friendly.”Lots of Russian and Eastern European Friends. Investing lots of money. And not only in New York. Miami is known as a hotspot of the ultra-wealthy looking to launder their money from overseas.
Thousands of Russians have moved to Sunny Isles.
Hundreds of ultra-wealthy former Soviet citizens bought Trump properties in South Florida.
People with really disturbing histories investing millions and millions of dollars.
Igor Zorin offers a story with all the weirdness modern Miami has to offer: Russian cash, a motorcycle club named after Russia’s powerful special forces and a condo tower branded by Donald Trump.
Thanks to its heavy Russian presence, Sunny Isles has acquired the nickname “Little Moscow.” From an interview with a Miami based Siberian-born realtor... “Miami is a brand,” she told me as we sat on a sofa in the building’s huge foyer. “People from all over the world want property here.” Developers were only putting up luxury properties because they “know that the crisis has not affected people with money,”
Most of her clients are Russian—there are now three direct flights per week between Moscow and Miami—and increasing numbers are moving to Florida after spending a few years in London first. “It’s a money center, and it’s a lot easier to get your money there than directly to the US, because of laws and tax issues,” she said. “But after your money has been in London for a while, you can move it to other places more easily.”
In the 2000s, Trump turned to licensing deals and trademarks, collecting a fee from other companies using the Trump name. This has allowed Trump to distance himself from properties or projects that have failed or encountered legal trouble and provided a convenient workaround to help launch projects, especially in Russia and former Soviet states, which bear Trump’s name but otherwise little relation to his general business.
Enter
Bayrock Group, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and invested an incredible amount of money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management. Bayrock was run by two investors:
Felix Sater, a Russian-born mobster who served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven "pump-and-dump" stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant.
He was an important figure at Bayrock, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower.
He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Micahel Cohen --Trump's disbarred former "fixer" attorney.
Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob.
Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former "Soviet official" who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic.
Arif graduated from the Moscow Institute of Trade and Economics and worked as a Soviet trade and commerce official for 17 years before moving to New York and founding Bayrock. In 2002, after meeting Trump, he moved Bayrock’s offices to Trump Tower, where he and his staff of Russian émigrés set up shop on the twenty-fourth floor.
Arif was offering him a 20 to 25 percent cut on his overseas projects, he said, not to mention management fees. Trump said in the deposition that Bayrock’s Tevfik Arif “brought the people up from Moscow to meet with me,”and that he was teaming with Bayrock on other planned ventures in Moscow. The only Russians who are likely have the resources and political connections to sponsor such ambitious international deals are the corrupt oligarchs.
In 2005, Trump told The Miami Herald “The name has brought a cachet to certain areas that wouldn’t have had it,” Dezer said Trump’s name put Sunny Isles Beach on the map as a classy destination — and
the Trump-branded condo units sold “10 to 20 percent higher than any of our competitors, and at a faster pace.”“We didn’t have any foreclosures or anything, despite the crisis.” In a 2007 deposition that was part of his
unsuccessful defamation lawsuit against reporter Timothy O’Brien Trump testified "that Bayrock was working their international contacts to complete Trump/Bayrock deals in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. He testified that
“Bayrock knew the investors” and that “this was going to be the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow, Kiev, Istanbul, et cetera, and Warsaw, Poland.” In 2008,
Donald Trump Jr. gave the following statement to the “Bridging U.S. and Emerging Markets Real Estate” conference in Manhattan:
“[I]n terms of high-end product influx into the United States, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” In July 2008,
Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. This was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value. Must be nice to have so many Russian oligarchs interested in giving you money.
In 2013,
Trump went to Russia for the Miss Universe pageant “financed in part by the development company of a Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov.… a Putin ally who is sometimes called the ‘Trump of Russia’ because of his tendency to put his own name on his buildings.” He met with many oligarchs.
Timeline of events. Flight records show how long he was there.
Video interview in Moscow where Trump says "...China wanted it this year. And Russia wanted it very badly." I bet they did.
Also in 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a
“sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
In 2014,
Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because
“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia. I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We’ve got some guys that really, really love golf, and they’re really invested in our programmes. We just go there all the time.’” A 2015
racketeering case against Bayrock, Sater, and Arif, and others, alleged that: “for most of its existence it [Bayrock] was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated,” engaging “in a pattern of continuous, related crimes, including mail, wire, and bank fraud; tax evasion; money laundering; conspiracy; bribery; extortion; and embezzlement.” Although the lawsuit does not allege complicity by Trump, it claims that Bayrock exploited its joint ventures with Trump as a conduit for laundering money and evading taxes. The lawsuit cites as a “Concrete example of their crime, Trump SoHo, [which] stands 454 feet tall at Spring and Varick, where it also stands monument to spectacularly corrupt money-laundering and tax evasion.”
In 2016, the Trump Presidential Campaign
was helped by Russia.
(I don't have the presidential term sourced yet. I'll post an update when I do. I'm sure you probably remember most of them...sigh. TY to the main posters here. Obviously I'm standing on your shoulders having taken a lot of the information or articles from here).
submitted by Well__Sourced to Keep_Track [link] [comments]
A Look at the FDA Approval Process and How it Affects Your Investments
I’ve been wanting to do a post like this for a long time now. Now that healthcare has basically been the hottest thing for the last year (and somehow still getting even hotter), I thought it would be a good time. Many people try to buy into pharmaceutical companies around FDA approval targets without truly understanding what they’re getting into. Full disclosure, I am a doctor, but I will try to write this in layman’s terms as much as possible. If I get anything wrong, I’ll be sure to edit the post. To the best of my knowledge, everything I am about to say is researched (and therefore correct).
I’m going to go through the entire FDA approval process as a timeline, and then at the end, talk about other things to consider when investing in pharmaceuticals (i.e., more nuanced stuff that requires/applies healthcare understanding). One caveat here is people use “phases” in multiple ways. The way I will use it is the way I see most often being used in press releases and DD on
pennystocks.
Preclinical: to begin, you must submit a proposal that basically states why you think a biologic compound will work. Without getting too technical, the preclinical is basically where you demonstrate a proof of concept.
Here is a very generic example: Let’s say that HIV binds to GME receptor on cells. I have been doing petri dish experiments on a compound I created that prevents anything from binding to GME (this is
in vitro if you ever see that term tossed around). I submit this evidence to the FDA and say that I think my compound will work in theory. TONS of things work
in vitro and never progress beyond that. At this point, the FDA says, “okay we think your compound might work too, you can start human trials.”
Investor takeaway: the results of this phase mean absolutely nothing. If a drug failed in this phase, that would truly mean the company is incompetent in both their ability to assess the science, and in their ability to provide meaningful news to generate investor buzz.
Phase 1: Anything that passes preclinical is ready for human trials. We are talking very small trials, like less than 100 people. For smaller companies, this is their chance to get some hype about their pharmaceutical. For anyone who understands the process, this is truly meaningless. Again, working in vitro does not (and likely will not) translate to working in humans. This phase typically lasts several months and is primarily designed to ensure that the drug is safe.
Here is a real life example, one that has already garnered a lot of attention: Atossa Therapeutics (ATOS) and their new breast cancer drug. Here is where medical knowledge (or solid research) can really help you. Their new breast cancer drug is called endoxifen. There are already multiple analogues (drugs that work in exactly the same way with minor differences in their chemical structures) on the market. Given the number of safe analogues on the market, it is likely (but not certain) this drug will be safe for human use. It is important to note here that phase 1 trials may be done on healthy participants without any disease, solely to test for safety. Accordingly, passage through phase 1 still may not demonstrate proof of concept on humans who have a particular disease.
Let’s say that ATOS had announced its intention to start testing breast cancer treatment and initiate phase 1 trials. Like I said, the likelihood of success is pretty high given the success of previous analogues. On the other hand the downside is huge. Companies can essentially go bankrupt at this stage if their “sure thing” drug or medical device fails. Always be sure to look at risk vs reward. A drug that enters phase 1 only has around a
14% likelihood of making it all the way to FDA approval. Certain categories of drugs like those that treat cancer have even lower success rates (3.4%). While FDA drug approval does appear to be increasing
more than 80% of drugs that enter this stage will never see market. Investor takeaway: the road from here is super long and passing this phase really can’t tell you anything about its success in further stages. Many drugs are analogues and breeze through this phase, it is important not to get too hyped on them for that reason.
Phase 2: Unlike phase 1 that focuses on drug safety, phase 2 tests the efficacy of the drug you are studying. This phase will typically have less than 1,000 participants, but they will all have the disease of interest. In this phase, we are looking to ensure that the drug works (provides statistically significant improvement) and is relatively safe as far as side effects. To limit research bias, sometimes we will divide the participants and give some the drug and keep some as the control group (they may get a placebo or no drug at all).
This is a pretty straightforward stage and lasts anywhere from months to years. It really depends on the drug being studied. I would never really expect a mainstream drug to get through this stage in under 6 months. The only conditions in which that would be logically feasible are either:
- COVID (solely because of the politicization of the process) or
- drugs treating conditions with extremely high mortality (because people won’t survive more than 6 months).
Lots of companies like to start releasing press releases close to FDA review of phase 2 results. Always be wary of those results. If my breast cancer drug was successful in 600 people and failed in 300, then while the numbers look good, the data may not be there. There is a lot that goes into statistical analysis and it isn’t quite as simple as more people did well than did poorly.
It’s also important to realize that side effect profile is really important. Let’s say the aforementioned breast cancer agent ends up prolonging life in 80% of the study participants that received the drug. However, there’s also this nasty little side effect of developing a pulmonary embolism in 15-20% of people. That’s not insignificant and it is up to the FDA to decide whether or not the risk outweighs the benefit. Sometimes the FDA will order companies to redo this phase if the data are inconclusive. With cancer agents, this is common because the drugs are so toxic to so many parts of the body, so it really is about risk/benefit analysis.
The important thing to look at in this phase when comparing the results of the treatment group to the control group is what is called the p-value. For those of you who took stats, you should know what this is. For those that didn’t, just know that in healthcare, results with a p-value >0.05 are considered insignificant. It’s also important to note that clinical and statistical significance are also key things to remember. Sometimes the benefit of the drug is so minimal that the side effect profile outweighs the benefits and the FDA will prevent the drug from moving forward. It’s also important to remember that if this is a drug entering a market where there are competitors, the FDA will look and see if this drug provides enough benefit over existing drugs before making a decision.
One more nuance that pharmaceutical companies love to do is change the primary target. In the statistics world, that’s a pretty big no-no. If my initial proposal was that the breast cancer agent would prolong the life of my patients, and then suddenly I start talking about how it actually increases their pain-free time, this is a huge red flag. You can deduce that they likely didn’t meet their primary target and pivoted to something else they could meet. In any study you can find specific characteristic that makes you look good.
Investor takeaway: this is the first phase that companies can really release “meaningful” information. Because of this, many companies try to raise funds at this time to capitalize on the hype, be wary of the words used in their press releases and marketing.
Phase 3: Phase 3 is basically a repeat of phase 2, but bigger. It’s used to determine real efficacy of a drug. In raw numbers, we are looking at about 300-3,000 participants and up to 4 years of data. Phase 3 looks at the exact same things as phase 2: efficacy and side effects observed among a treated group (and sometimes compared to a control group).
Statistical significance, that is, the thing that tells you whether the drug worked, is based heavily upon power. If you want to increase power, you can increase the sample size. In phase 3, the FDA is giving the drug a chance to sink or swim. They are once again looking to make sure you don’t discover any new, obscure side effects and to ensure that the phase 2 results were not a statistical anomaly/the drug really does work.
Beyond sample size, the biggest difference between phases 2 and 3 is that we are observing a longer period of time for adverse events. Note the maximum time differences: up to 2 years for phase 2, and up to 4 years for phase 3. There are side effects that don’t manifest within the first 2 years. A very simple example is, actually cancer agents that cause cardiac fibrosis or pulmonary fibrosis after years of use. These are things that may have been masked in the phase 2 study because the duration.
The other thing is that we may discover rarer, more deadly side effects in this phase. Let’s say in phase 2, we found that 2 of our 1,000 participants developed brain cancer. The phase 2 data may show that this was statistically insignificant and cannot be attributed to the drug (remember, sample size is very important). Maybe the phase 3 study will suddenly show that another 8 people developed brain cancer and it was due to the drug.
Investor takeaway: many drugs fail here, and not because they don’t work. They fail because they aren’t significantly better than what is available or the benefit is not enough to outweigh the risks. FDA approval isn’t simply contingent upon a drug working, there are many, many factors that come into play.
Phase 4: this is the big phase, thousands of participants, possibly multiple hospitals around the country/world. This phase further increases the power of the data and shows that the drug really, really does work and is actually safe. Getting to phase 4 is actually a pretty big deal.
At this point, the company will apply for FDA approval including all of the information they have gathered at this point. In this stage, we are considering not only efficacy and safety, but also simplicity of use, and drug abuse potential. Drug abuse potential is a pretty hot topic right now because, well, opioid epidemic. Many opioids in the last few years have not received FDA approval solely because they are too easily abused. This entire application process takes 6-10 months for the FDA to review all the evidence and decide what happens.
It is not uncommon for the FDA to request more data before approving a drug or further review. Many times they will request the company conduct a new study of x to determine y. This is normal but can seriously impede the approval timeline of a drug. This is where you have to remember opportunity cost. After approval it goes to market, yay!
Investor takeaway: you may think once the drug receives FDA approval that you are out of the woods in terms of your investment. You would be wrong.
Making it to market: When a drug finally hits market, there are two major things for investors to consider. Let’s start with the scary one, removal from the market. Remember how many times I’ve mentioned power, and sample size above? That becomes super relevant here. Depending on the drug, when it finally reaches market we may have many-fold more “participants” with which we can study the side effects of the drug.
Sometimes drugs are pulled from the market because certain side effects emerge that flew under the radar during clinical trial phases. Sometimes the FDA sticks a black box warning on the drug (which really makes doctors stop prescribing it unless they have to). In either care, share prices tend to drop. They will plummet, though, if the FDA removes it from market.
Market earnings: The last “opportunity” for investors in the approval process is the sales data after the first quarter of marketing. This is where the company shows their revenue from the sale of the drug. If you have medical knowledge, you can really thrive here. If you don’t, you are likely to get screwed because you probably won’t understand the nuances in what drives physicians to prescribe drugs and avoid others.
Just because a drug works super well doesn’t mean it will ever be used. Examples of that are ACRX’s new sufentanil agents. Those will likely see poor sales data because from a clinical perspective, even though they are approved, and work, they will almost never be used. You would not know that without understanding the specifics of post-operative pain management.
And finally, a disclaimer. Anything I said here, I can be totally wrong. Sufentanil could become the most popular agent on the market for reasons I don’t understand or couldn’t fathom. Maybe ACRX will have an insanely good marketing team. I am simply talking about making the best decision based on the available knowledge. Stock prices are fickle beasts and they don’t always respond the way we expect.
A message to those who tend to hold on to their bags to gamble on FDA approval: Yes, this really is gambling. Look at the statistics of how often drugs make it past each stage. You lost 40% on ATOS, you know what would be worse? Somehow their drug fails and now you have lost 80%. You see a drug running before FDA decision deadline, don’t buy it. No one knows how the FDA is going to respond and you are just as likely to lose your money than you are to make it.
Honestly, you are more likely to lose money because there are three outcomes, and two cause you to lose money, one of which will potentially bankrupt your position. The FDA could either approve the drug (yay!), outright reject the drug (oof), or ask for more information. That last one is kind of misleading because it may not mean the drug has failed, but it definitely will destroy the hype built up and tank the share price. The extra information requested could take forever to get and you would, once again, have to consider opportunity cost.
If there is anything else you think I should have discussed, just let me know and I will try to add it.
If this was helpful, please let me know. If so, I can start posting regular medical-based DD on the trending healthcare tickers from this sub! submitted by Aflycted to pennystocks [link] [comments]
Losing touch extended version - now with ideas for changes
Hello all
Some days ago I made a post that got a bit of attention (
scopely_you_are_losing_touch_with_your_playerbase).
But my post did not focus enough on what can be done to help alleviate some of the problems we are seeing in the game right now. So therefor I will try to do a better job of that in this post. It’s not going to be perfect, probably not even close, but I really hope it can spark a discussion that Scopely, Cerebro in particular, can take some points from and try to make this game that we like so much, and make it that much better.
Before we go into the nitty gritty, I would like to say thank you for all the positive feedback I got on the last post. I had feared that it there would be a lot people throwing mud at each other or starting to bash Scopely. But most of you kept it sober and constructive, so I hope we can keep that tone.
With that said, this post can be a bit more dividing of the community, cause we all have one thing that we think is the most important thing to fix. And some of the solutions I am going to propose might not hit the spot for you or at all, but I hope it sparks a discussion.
This is going to be a long post, and I know that it will not go down as well as the first one, for one it is simply too long, but also because it gets too focused on what changes I would like to see. Cause we can all agree on that we want changes, but when we then have to discuss what those changes are, then we get more divided. I really want to point out that I don't expect everybody to agree on what I have written. And also that my native language isn't English, but I hope that my points still gets across.
But lets get into it...
Red Stars
We are going to start out with what I personally find to be the biggest issue in the game right now. I know that RTA is a more hot topic right now, but I find red stars to be the biggest issue.
Right now red stars are a double edged sword. Cause when you get the 5+ red drop on the new character you of course get happy. But with the droprates in mind, most of the time red stars leave you with a sour taste.
Getting 3 red stars or lower on a new good character is so deflating that even id you got good pulls on your last 2 characters, that goodwill is out the window straight away.
So what can we do to make red stars a bit better? I think the solution is in the silvegold promotion credits. If silver credits was added to red stars so that when you get a duplicate character, then you also get some promotion credits.
Here is how one solution could be, the numbers might have to change a bit, but this is just the general idea.
1-2 star dupe: 1 silver promotion credit
3-4 star dupe: 2 silver promotion credit
5 star dupe: 3 silver promotion credit
6 star dupe: 1 gold promotion credit
7 star dupe: 2 gold promotion credit
These are just numbers to showcase the idea. If we look at my pulls for Bishop then this is what it would have netted me (all my pulls where dupes apart from the 3 star Bishop):
20 1-2 star pulls = 20 silver credits
19 3-4 star pulls = 38 silver credits
6 5 star = 18 silver credits
Total = 76 silver credits.
Now that is not a lot, and I don’t think that would break the promotion system. But I do think that it would help with the bad feeling about red stars.
With this system red star orbs are still the driving factor, and if you get lucky then you still get happy, but now when you get unlucky, then at least you progressed a bit still by having more promotions credit.
I would also like to get rid of the promotion store. We have enough randomness in the game. If we could promote characters straight from the character screen, then the system would feel a lot better.
I get that the store is probably there to make people burn some cores when they are chasing that on character they want to bring up.
Also, let us update them way faster. Right now over a month passes on most new characters before they are even added to the store.
I think the worries from Scopely is that we would start hoarding, and then only spend on the “best” new characters. But I really don’t see that as a problem in the long run. Cause with the added focus on wider rosters you will still have to bring up more characters instead of focusing on a few.
RTA and the Battlepass
So this is the hottest topic right now, at least with the people that I talk to.
If we look to other games battlepasses are generally a positive thing, but in almost all of them they are also something that you can get done by playing the game as usual. I play PUBG and while the battlepass here is something that divides the community a bit, it is one that I like. Some days I just have to get some kills and I progress. Other days I have to get kills with a crossbow (I’m not good enough to get that done), but its all something I can do by playing the game as usual, I just have to pick up some other weapons than the “meta”.
Battlepasses are created for two things:
· Have people log in every day.
But in MSF people already have to do that, so the battlepass doesn’t do anything at all for that.
· Have people spend extra money, especially in FTP games.
If spenders got the possibility to buy all the prizes we get from the battlepass for 20$ without having to grind it out, then I am 100% sure that way more people would buy it. But with the current way its tied to the RTA I actually think you are just losing money.
The current form of battlepass that is implemented is really just an offer with extra steps.
In MSF you have tied the battlepass to a single gamemode, and that takes all the possible fun out of that game mode. No people I have talked to likes RTA, not 1 person has something positive to say about it actually. But when you ask around, then a lot of people really started to like the balanced draft.
So what can we do to make this a bit better?
Solution 1: make us able to complete the objectives in other gamemodes. And if you really want us to grind the RTA also, then make it count double so that there is an incentive to play it if you want to get it over with as fast a possible.
And that is where I think the biggest problem with RTA is right now. Its not fun, it is only a grind. The way I play it is to open RTA and press auto when I’m at work. I don’t even look at it, I just wait for the winneloser screen to pop up, and then go in and do it again. I get annoyed when people are slow, or if they don’t load in.
As I see it there are 0 positive things about RTA right now. And the biggest problem I have is that no one I asked could actually find a way to make RTA fun with the current setup.
Leagues and events could be a saving grace. But since we don’t even know what Scopley have in mind about these we can’t event try to make that better. I’m afraid that events is just like the battlepass, but I think that leagues could take RTA in the right direction. Cause if you make RTA about winning and trying your best, then its suddenly competitive instead of just a mindless grind.
And I think it goes without saying, but I’m going to do it anyways, please revert the changes you made in 5.1 about quitters.
Doom raid
After my original post I was told that the Doom raid wouldn’t actually be for a limited time. And that changes my view a lot. Cause I do like that there are new and hard/almost impossible challenges. I was only worried if it was a limited that most people wouldn’t ever be able to get in there before it was taken down. But if its there to stay, then I don’t mind the current difficulty, even though I won’t step in there for at least another 6 months at best.
But the point about the prizes still stand. They are simply not enough. Not even close actually. And right now only the top alliances are even able to get them, so you have created a “the rich getting richer” scenario, cause the prizes in there are what makes you able to compete in there.
Availability of new characters
I personally don’t mind the cadence of new releases of characters, new characters are what drives the game forward. But you have to make them available faster. The last couple of releases we have seen them added to orbs pretty fast (Longshot or Shatterstar was even added as their event was going on), and that is a small step in the right direction. But lets take a look at the most grievous current unfarmable character, Beast, he has been in the game for over 7 months (possible longer, I couldn’t find the exact date he was released.) without being farmable. That is simply not good enough.
I know that he didn’t sell that well, and that Scopely has probably tried to wait with making him farmable to see if they could make more money of him, especially now that he actually seems to have a good place on the Axmen, I get it. I personally unlocked Beast at 3 stars, and I have not used him in anything than a throwaway blitz team. Is that fun? Is that something that makes me want to invest further into him? I think you know the answer.
A possible solution to this problem is to add them to some of the stores faster. I understand why you are hesitant to add anything newish to the blitz, raid or arena store. Cause people now have so many credits stockpiled that any further income on them once they are added are out the window. But I think you can add them at a much higher price point in the stores. That does two things:
You now give people something to use their credits on that they actually want, and at a higher price you are getting people to deplete their resources faster and taking both the blitz and arena store economy to a place where we once again have to make decisions on what to invest into. But at least you are giving us something to invest into. As of right now I have 150k blitz credits, so when you added Electro at 500, that wont even make a dent into that economy. But if you added new characters faster at a premium price, lets say 5-10,000 credits. Then you are giving us something to invest in, and you are bringing the economy to a better place. They of course shouldn’t stay at the premium price forever, at given intervals they should have their prices reduced until they hit the 500 credits that normal characters in the store has.
I personally don’t mind that a few select characters are orbs only for a while. I get why they are that. But I also understand the frustration that a lot of players feel about orb only characters. I only mention this so that a discussion can spark from it.
If we look at the prices on buying new characters I think we can all agree that they are too high. But I get why they are high and I don’t think that will change. I personally don’t find it to be that big of a problem, but I understand why a lot of people do. I also think the problem would be alleviated a bit, if we could start farming them in one way or the other sooner. Then players who really want the newest characters can pay and be ahead of the meta, and the people who can’t/won’t pay can still try to catch up without having to wait half a year, where the ones they can now farm are probably power crept anyway.
New player problems
This is only something that I have heard a bit about, and only mention it so that others can chime in.
But right now there is a huge scarcity of blue ability mats. And there is no real good way of farming or even buying them.
I think the problem stems from the powerlevel of characters, so now newer players don’t have to spend time on the lower raids that actually give these mats like we did when we started out. It doesn’t take a long time for a new player to be able to get into an alliance that does at least U6 or even U7, where these mats aren’t something they get.
A simple solution that I could see working out is to simply remove green and blue ability mats from the game. I doubt that Scopley are making any money on these mats, and for people that have played a long time these mats are a non issue and never will be cause we have pretty much infinite of them.
As I said, I don’t know too much about this problem as I only just heard about it on a stream not so long ago. But I wanted to add it to the list anyways. And there are probably more new player problems that I don’t even know of. So please add that to the discussion below, but also please try to be constructive about it, not just “We want more”.
Skillitary/new teams videos
We like that we can see new teams in action, but when you showcase them you have to be upfront about them. Skillitary has left a sour taste in the mouth of most people who bought into them.
Yes, they can win against Marauders if brought up to the same level, but its still a gamble and more luckbased than playing with actual skill (on pun(isher) intended). But if you miss that first disrupt on Stryfe, then the whole team just crumbles. So if you showcase a new team as the new team to take out the “big bad”, then they have to at least be able to punch up a bit on them. I’m not saying that they should just win 100% of the time, but with Skillitary they even struggle on punch downs.
If Shadowlands turn out to be as big of a letdown as Skillitary I think that will make you lose a lot of goodwill and at this point in the game, that will be very hard to gain back.
War
I am generally pretty fine with war and how it plays out. There are two pain points that keeps popping up tho. The most obvious one is the matchmaking sometimes makes you go up against unwinnable opponents. And that does make it feel very bad. But I also understand why you can’t always have it close to your own TCP. Cause who would the top alliances ever face if it was only trying to match on TCP?
If it was changed to only factor in TCP, then we would suddenly have alliances in the top leagues, who where a 10th of the biggest alliances, but they would never have to face them because of the TCP difference. So the current matchmaking system is probably the lesser of the two evils. And yes, I know that it is very demoralizing to get 50m+ punch-ups week after week. But I think that stems from a problem that is unfixable, and that is the huge TCP difference between alliances. If we take a look at Legion_of_Cabal they currently have a combined TCP of 400 million. If we look at the 100th most powerful alliance they right now have a combined TCP of 251 million. That is such a huge difference that war matchmaking will just not ever be perfect.
The second pain point of war is time spent. And in that also when you have to spend that time. Luckily my own alliance aren’t too focused on war, we are only G4. Most of the time we face alliances that wont clear us and we wont clear them. But higher up in the leagues, clearing as fast as possible is the only way to win. And that means getting on every time new energy is available, also if that means disrupting your sleep schedule to do that. I personally would never do that at where I am in life, but I understand why. I was fighting for world first in WoW back in the day, so I get why people do it. The problem is that they have to do it 3 times a week. Instead of just, in the case of WoW, when new content comes out. Its just not healthy.
I don’t have any experience in high level war in MSF, so I hope that some of you that do can weigh in on this with ideas how to make it better.
Resource bottlenecks
This is a sore point for everybody in the game. I think we all understand why bottlenecks are a thing, and we all probably understand that it is also a necessary thing in a game to have something to grind for. But in the current state of the game, there are simply way too many bottlenecks.
My proposed solution would be as follows:
Get rid of green and blue ability mats. They serve no purpose anymore other than hindering new players from catching up. Then when the next level of ability levels are introduced, then you can add new currency for that and have us start out on the same level. Spenders will then be able to get a head start as always, and that is fine. Also take away the gold cost for leveling up abilities, or at least lower them.
Get rid of training mats all together. Or change it so that they are the only currency needed to level up characters. It simply can’t be both gold and training mats unless they are giving them out a bit more freely. And I know it’s a balancing act, cause you don’t want people to have too many resources, and if we had infinite resources, that would also be bad for the game, as there is nothing fun in having everything given to you.
If the above are implemented, then I don’t even think you have to make any changes to the gold we gain now.
We of course don’t know how much money you make out of creating these scarcities, and I get it if the metrics show that you can’t just make them go away. But then at least acknowledge the problem that players are feeling about the bottlenecks. You don’t have to fix it in one big swoop.
Gear is another bottleneck, but one that I personally find better balanced. Sure, right now getting G15 isn’t easy, but I also don’t think it should be easy. A change that I would love to see however is a better way to be able to focus on the gear that we need. Right now its all random, even the offers you made us are random. But again, I get if your metrics show something else and that you are doing this to make the most profit. But sometimes the most profit is not the way to go, if the cost is that you lose players by doing it.
Help us help you
In my first post I stayed away from mentioning bugs on purpose. Bugs will happen, and if you address them as fast as possible then that is probably ok.
But you have a limitless amount of people who would gladly help you test upcoming patches for free. Right now you even have an envoy program that you clearly aren’t using to its full potential. Have them help you out with testing new features.
Just look at ISO8, when you first announced it people where up in arms about it. But you decided to have the envoys weigh in, and it has been the best and most polished feature you have ever brought out.
Finishing remarks
Right now the game is in a rut, I don’t think that is up for discussion. It is natural for a 3 year old game, mobile at that, to lose players over time. But I still believe that you, Scopley, have the bones of a game that could live on for a long time. But you need to treat it a bit more as a game than as moneymaker. It can be both, and it can be successful at both.
Make it fun again, that’s what games are about, entertainment. There has to be things that are hard or almost impossible to get, but it just can’t be every aspect of the game.
You said you wanted to look at reducing the low quality screen time, and then added RTA. I hope you can see how that makes us have trust issues.
I know this post isn’t perfect in any way, and I am very well aware that it might not change a thing. But I do hope that will, I really really do.
If you made it all the way to the end, then thank you for reading it all, or at least skimming the points that you feel are the most important.
And please, again, lets have a civil discussion about the issues we as players feel. And remember that even if we feel something is wrong, it might not actually be wrong for the game.
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A Look at the FDA Approval Process and How it Affects Your Investments
I’ve been wanting to do a post like this for a long time now. Now that healthcare has basically been the hottest thing for the last year (and somehow still getting even hotter), I thought it would be a good time. Many people try to buy into pharmaceutical companies around FDA approval targets without truly understanding what they’re getting into. Full disclosure, I am a doctor, but I will try to write this in layman’s terms as much as possible. If I get anything wrong, I’ll be sure to edit the post. To the best of my knowledge, everything I am about to say is researched (and therefore correct).
I’m going to go through the entire FDA approval process as a timeline, and then at the end, talk about other things to consider when investing in pharmaceuticals (i.e., more nuanced stuff that requires/applies healthcare understanding). One caveat here is people use “phases” in multiple ways. The way I will use it is the way I see most often being used in press releases and DD on reddit.
Preclinical: to begin, you must submit a proposal that basically states why you think a biologic compound will work. Without getting too technical, the preclinical is basically where you demonstrate a proof of concept.
Here is a very generic example: Let’s say that HIV binds to GME receptor on cells. I have been doing petri dish experiments on a compound I created that prevents anything from binding to GME (this is
in vitro if you ever see that term tossed around). I submit this evidence to the FDA and say that I think my compound will work in theory. TONS of things work
in vitro and never progress beyond that. At this point, the FDA says, “okay we think your compound might work too, you can start human trials.”
Investor takeaway: the results of this phase mean absolutely nothing. If a drug failed in this phase, that would truly mean the company is incompetent in both their ability to assess the science, and in their ability to provide meaningful news to generate investor buzz.
Phase 1: Anything that passes preclinical is ready for human trials. We are talking very small trials, like less than 100 people. For smaller companies, this is their chance to get some hype about their pharmaceutical. For anyone who understands the process, this is truly meaningless. Again, working in vitro does not (and likely will not) translate to working in humans. This phase typically lasts several months and is primarily designed to ensure that the drug is safe.
Here is a real life example, one that has already garnered a lot of attention: Atossa Therapeutics (ATOS) and their new breast cancer drug. Here is where medical knowledge (or solid research) can really help you. Their new breast cancer drug is called endoxifen. There are already multiple analogues (drugs that work in exactly the same way with minor differences in their chemical structures) on the market. Given the number of safe analogues on the market, it is likely (but not certain) this drug will be safe for human use. It is important to note here that phase 1 trials may be done on healthy participants without any disease, solely to test for safety. Accordingly, passage through phase 1 still may not demonstrate proof of concept on humans who have a particular disease.
Let’s say that ATOS had announced its intention to start testing breast cancer treatment and initiate phase 1 trials. Like I said, the likelihood of success is pretty high given the success of previous analogues. On the other hand the downside is huge. Companies can essentially go bankrupt at this stage if their “sure thing” drug or medical device fails. Always be sure to look at risk vs reward. A drug that enters phase 1 only has around a
14% likelihood of making it all the way to FDA approval. Certain categories of drugs like those that treat cancer have even lower success rates (3.4%). While FDA drug approval does appear to be increasing
more than 80% of drugs that enter this stage will never see market. Investor takeaway: the road from here is super long and passing this phase really can’t tell you anything about its success in further stages. Many drugs are analogues and breeze through this phase, it is important not to get too hyped on them for that reason.
Phase 2: Unlike phase 1 that focuses on drug safety, phase 2 tests the efficacy of the drug you are studying. This phase will typically have less than 1,000 participants, but they will all have the disease of interest. In this phase, we are looking to ensure that the drug works (provides statistically significant improvement) and is relatively safe as far as side effects. To limit research bias, sometimes we will divide the participants and give some the drug and keep some as the control group (they may get a placebo or no drug at all).
This is a pretty straightforward stage and lasts anywhere from months to years. It really depends on the drug being studied. I would never really expect a mainstream drug to get through this stage in under 6 months. The only conditions in which that would be logically feasible are either:
- COVID (solely because of the politicization of the process) or
- drugs treating conditions with extremely high mortality (because people won’t survive more than 6 months).
Lots of companies like to start releasing press releases close to FDA review of phase 2 results. Always be wary of those results. If my breast cancer drug was successful in 600 people and failed in 300, then while the numbers look good, the data may not be there. There is a lot that goes into statistical analysis and it isn’t quite as simple as more people did well than did poorly.
It’s also important to realize that side effect profile is really important. Let’s say the aforementioned breast cancer agent ends up prolonging life in 80% of the study participants that received the drug. However, there’s also this nasty little side effect of developing a pulmonary embolism in 15-20% of people. That’s not insignificant and it is up to the FDA to decide whether or not the risk outweighs the benefit. Sometimes the FDA will order companies to redo this phase if the data are inconclusive. With cancer agents, this is common because the drugs are so toxic to so many parts of the body, so it really is about risk/benefit analysis.
The important thing to look at in this phase when comparing the results of the treatment group to the control group is what is called the p-value. For those of you who took stats, you should know what this is. For those that didn’t, just know that in healthcare, results with a p-value >0.05 are considered insignificant. It’s also important to note that clinical and statistical significance are also key things to remember. Sometimes the benefit of the drug is so minimal that the side effect profile outweighs the benefits and the FDA will prevent the drug from moving forward. It’s also important to remember that if this is a drug entering a market where there are competitors, the FDA will look and see if this drug provides enough benefit over existing drugs before making a decision.
One more nuance that pharmaceutical companies love to do is change the primary target. In the statistics world, that’s a pretty big no-no. If my initial proposal was that the breast cancer agent would prolong the life of my patients, and then suddenly I start talking about how it actually increases their pain-free time, this is a huge red flag. You can deduce that they likely didn’t meet their primary target and pivoted to something else they could meet. In any study you can find specific characteristic that makes you look good.
Investor takeaway: this is the first phase that companies can really release “meaningful” information. Because of this, many companies try to raise funds at this time to capitalize on the hype, be wary of the words used in their press releases and marketing.
Phase 3: Phase 3 is basically a repeat of phase 2, but bigger. It’s used to determine real efficacy of a drug. In raw numbers, we are looking at about 300-3,000 participants and up to 4 years of data. Phase 3 looks at the exact same things as phase 2: efficacy and side effects observed among a treated group (and sometimes compared to a control group).
Statistical significance, that is, the thing that tells you whether the drug worked, is based heavily upon power. If you want to increase power, you can increase the sample size. In phase 3, the FDA is giving the drug a chance to sink or swim. They are once again looking to make sure you don’t discover any new, obscure side effects and to ensure that the phase 2 results were not a statistical anomaly/the drug really does work.
Beyond sample size, the biggest difference between phases 2 and 3 is that we are observing a longer period of time for adverse events. Note the maximum time differences: up to 2 years for phase 2, and up to 4 years for phase 3. There are side effects that don’t manifest within the first 2 years. A very simple example is, actually cancer agents that cause cardiac fibrosis or pulmonary fibrosis after years of use. These are things that may have been masked in the phase 2 study because the duration.
The other thing is that we may discover rarer, more deadly side effects in this phase. Let’s say in phase 2, we found that 2 of our 1,000 participants developed brain cancer. The phase 2 data may show that this was statistically insignificant and cannot be attributed to the drug (remember, sample size is very important). Maybe the phase 3 study will suddenly show that another 8 people developed brain cancer and it was due to the drug.
Investor takeaway: many drugs fail here, and not because they don’t work. They fail because they aren’t significantly better than what is available or the benefit is not enough to outweigh the risks. FDA approval isn’t simply contingent upon a drug working, there are many, many factors that come into play.
Phase 4: this is the big phase, thousands of participants, possibly multiple hospitals around the country/world. This phase further increases the power of the data and shows that the drug really, really does work and is actually safe. Getting to phase 4 is actually a pretty big deal.
At this point, the company will apply for FDA approval including all of the information they have gathered at this point. In this stage, we are considering not only efficacy and safety, but also simplicity of use, and drug abuse potential. Drug abuse potential is a pretty hot topic right now because, well, opioid epidemic. Many opioids in the last few years have not received FDA approval solely because they are too easily abused. This entire application process takes 6-10 months for the FDA to review all the evidence and decide what happens.
It is not uncommon for the FDA to request more data before approving a drug or further review. Many times they will request the company conduct a new study of x to determine y. This is normal but can seriously impede the approval timeline of a drug. This is where you have to remember opportunity cost. After approval it goes to market, yay!
Investor takeaway: you may think once the drug receives FDA approval that you are out of the woods in terms of your investment. You would be wrong.
Making it to market: When a drug finally hits market, there are two major things for investors to consider. Let’s start with the scary one, removal from the market. Remember how many times I’ve mentioned power, and sample size above? That becomes super relevant here. Depending on the drug, when it finally reaches market we may have many-fold more “participants” with which we can study the side effects of the drug.
Sometimes drugs are pulled from the market because certain side effects emerge that flew under the radar during clinical trial phases. Sometimes the FDA sticks a black box warning on the drug (which really makes doctors stop prescribing it unless they have to). In either care, share prices tend to drop. They will plummet, though, if the FDA removes it from market.
Market earnings: The last “opportunity” for investors in the approval process is the sales data after the first quarter of marketing. This is where the company shows their revenue from the sale of the drug. If you have medical knowledge, you can really thrive here. If you don’t, you are likely to get screwed because you probably won’t understand the nuances in what drives physicians to prescribe drugs and avoid others.
Just because a drug works super well doesn’t mean it will ever be used. Examples of that are ACRX’s new sufentanil agents. Those will likely see poor sales data because from a clinical perspective, even though they are approved, and work, they will almost never be used. You would not know that without understanding the specifics of post-operative pain management.
And finally, a disclaimer. Anything I said here, I can be totally wrong. Sufentanil could become the most popular agent on the market for reasons I don’t understand or couldn’t fathom. Maybe ACRX will have an insanely good marketing team. I am simply talking about making the best decision based on the available knowledge. Stock prices are fickle beasts and they don’t always respond the way we expect.
A message to those who tend to hold on to their bags to gamble on FDA approval: Yes, this really is gambling. Look at the statistics of how often drugs make it past each stage. You lost 40% on ATOS, you know what would be worse? Somehow their drug fails and now you have lost 80%. You see a drug running before FDA decision deadline, don’t buy it. No one knows how the FDA is going to respond and you are just as likely to lose your money than you are to make it.
Honestly, you are more likely to lose money because there are three outcomes, and two cause you to lose money, one of which will potentially bankrupt your position. The FDA could either approve the drug (yay!), outright reject the drug (oof), or ask for more information. That last one is kind of misleading because it may not mean the drug has failed, but it definitely will destroy the hype built up and tank the share price. The extra information requested could take forever to get and you would, once again, have to consider opportunity cost.
If there is anything else you think I should have discussed, just let me know and I will try to add it.
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My Christian Upbringing and How I Escaped
Discovering and embracing Satanism is an easier task for some than for others. I just wanted to share a little of my experience for anyone coming from a strict Christian upbringing or even a Christian cult. It's rare that someone is able to escape the clutches of a cult unscathed and then go on to thrive. It's not something that happens overnight and it can involve undoing a lot of ingrained beliefs, going through an identity crisis, losing family or friends, and changing your entire perception of yourself and life. Going through it, I wasn't sure I was going to ever get out. But now, I can really stand back and be amazed at how resilient we can be.
In the 80s, my midwestern parents found themselves in a self-destructive lifestyle, and after attending a church-hosted and horrific
dramatization of people being dragged off to hell, they turned to Christianity as the magic cure for their unhappiness in life. When I was born, they were still brand-new born-agains struggling with substance abuse and addiction, but they went all in. And I mean ALL in. They ghosted all their friends, cut ties with every member of my extended family, and made a new family of believers. We were Pentecostal - the 700 club-watching, faith-healing, tongues-speaking, Proctor and Gamble-boycotting variety. If you've ever seen
Jesus Camp that was basically my life. I don't remember a lot from those early years, but I've heard stories and have seen family photos to know that I don't want to remember.
As my sister and I got older, they attempted to shelter us from the horrors of the sin-ridden secular world. We were homeschooled with an all-Christian, church-approved curriculum taught by my mother (who had an 8th grade education) while my dad was at work. My textbooks contained and presented as fact the typical
hoaxes and flawed
analogies that form the basis for Christian science-denial, and I didn’t know any different. We lived in the Bible belt on a small farm, and everyone I knew was at least some form of Christian. There weren't enough non-believers to convert, so we spent most of our time trying to convert the Catholics and Baptists to "real" Christianity. My mom always said Pentecostals came first, Catholics and Baptists came along after and bastardized Christianity. Most of my "classes" were based in homemaking or farm work, and went along nicely with our weekly Wednesday night girl's program,
The Missionettes. It was basically girl scouts but focused on Bible memorization and turning us into good Christian wives. We had badges like sewing, knitting, cooking, grooming, ettiquette, abstinence, and first aid. Of course we also had religious badges for communion, prayer, healing, fruits of the spirit, and the armor of god etc. A very well-rounded education.
While my parents went to church and we put on the face like we were living the blessed life, things at home weren't great. The hardest thing growing up was hearing all the adults at church go on and on about how great my parents were and how lucky I was to have such good Christian parents. One day, I remember my dad pulling me aside to tell me there was something wrong with my mom, that I should never make her angry because he wouldn't be able to choose between us. When I was 5, my mom threw a pair of scissors at my dad. They got embedded in his leg and he had to go to the emergency room. When I was around 6, my mom began to threaten my dad in front of us, saying by the time he got home from work, we would be gone. That my sister and I needed to pick who we wanted to live with because by the end of the day, we needed to be packed and ready to leave. My mom was a big fan of belts and the wooden spoon, and she never spared the rod. I have had many objects broken on me. When she would make us bend over, I would try to look back and apologize, to ask what I had done wrong, or what i could do to fix it, but anything other than complete eyes-foward submission was viewed as rebellion and only added to the count. She told me once in a joking manner that when I was in trouble, all I would say was "I want to hold you" to try to get out of punishment. She laughed. When I was 7, my mom told us that Satan told her to kill us with a potato peeler, and that she was going to kill us, my dad, and then herself. But “luckily” god "saved" us! After that, I remember my sister and I used to hide in our closet and pray to god to turn us into farm animals. Horses, dogs, chickens, anything, so we could run away and be free. We didn't even want to be human anymore. By the time I was 12, suicidal ideation set in and never really let go. Satan didn't scare me anymore. My mom did. Hell was real and I was living in it.
When I was 13, my mom found a pencil in a parking lot from a local high school and determined that it was a sign from god that we should be enrolled in public school. I was terrified. These people weren't anything like me, they were all lost sinners and it was my job to be the shining light in the midst of darkness, to teach them the way. However, it turned out, I was the one who did most of the learning. I was exposed to more math and science in high school than I had been in my entire life. I learned about other cultures and history. I actually made some friends and got to see how other people live for the first time in my life. Nothing, absolutely nothing, at that high school even touched the evil I experienced at home. There were days I didn’t want to go home. I never missed a day of school if I could help it.
The things I had believed started to not make sense in my mind anymore. It took several years for me to put all the pieces together, but the final straw was actually reading the Bible entirely from cover to cover for the first time, rather than just the “reading plan” i was given. I learned when the gospels were actually written, who possibly wrote them and why. I started reading about as many different religions as I could and started realizing the similarties of them all. I had a good friend at the time who wasn't afraid to challenge every religious and political position I had, and realized that I didn't even know why I believed what I did, only that I was told to believe it and always had. I began to reexamine everything I believed, no matter how trivial or obvious. It became clear to me that more than anything, I just wanted more out of life than I was given.
Originally, I wasn't going to go to college. We didn't have enough money, no one in my family had ever gone to college, and my parents had just assumed that I'd end up being a pastor's wife who played the piano for church services. But on the advice of an advisor, I applied to and auditioned for a music program, and I got in. I was finally getting out. But not before my mom could have the final word. When my parents found out I had been talking to a boy at school and that I liked him, she called me "the whore" for a month. One day, I had the flu and missed school for a few days. My boyfriend asked if he could bring over a can of soup and the homework I had missed. My parents agreed, and when he came in, he sat on the end of my bed (the door was wide open and I was under a ton of blankets) to ask how I was doing. My mom walked by and screeched at the top of her lungs that he needed to get the fuck out of my room and out of her house. That we weren't allowed to be in the same room without supervision. I had basically learned that sticking up for myself was useless, but I
would stick up for him. He hadn't done anything wrong. I got out of bed and got up into her face and called her a psychotic bitch. She demanded that my dad throw me out. I looked at him and he looked at me and I will never forget what he said. "I told you not to make her angry because I can't choose between you. This is her house. You have to leave."
So I left. I slept in my car that night and eventually stayed with my boyfriend's family until my aunt (who my parent's ghosted) heard what happened. She took me in for several months until I could make enough money working a few part-time jobs to afford a small apartment. I completely left the church after that. I did visit a few others and even worked as a choir director at a non-denomination church for a while as a side gig, but it just wasn't the same. The veil had been lifted.
Out of the dozens of families who knew me, who watched me grow up and spent time with my family (some who even knew what was going on at home), none of them attempted to contact me. Out of all of my church friends, I am still in contact with only one, who left around the same time I did. When people say leaving a cult is like commiting social suicide, they aren't exaggerating. I was completely cut off.
If you asked my parents today, they would tell you that around 18, I gave into doubt and fell from grace. That the friends I made outside of church brainwashed me. That going to college was the nail in the coffin of my salvation. They'd tell you that by the time I turned 18, I was lost. But I was never lost. Not really. They’d never tell you that I always got in trouble for constantly questioning things. When I was eight, I wrote on the back of an offering envelope “If god created us, who created god?” and left it on a church pew for one of the elders to find (and subsequently got a beating for it). They’d never tell you that at ten, I got into an argument with the children’s pastor for saying men were superior to women because they were created first. They’d never tell you that as a Missionette, I got caught skipping sewing class to crash the Royal Rangers’ (all boys group) flag football games and outdoor events. And they’d certainly never tell you that I was eventually replaced as the president of a bible study group at school for focusing on the less-read and more appalling stories in the Bible, telling people that the gospels weren’t actually written by eye-witnesses, and encouraging people to actually read and think for themselves.
Discovering Satanism was actually one of the biggest steps in trauma recovery for me. To realize that all of my actions and behaviors were based in natural human needs and emotions that aren't at all sinful. That my
learned helplessness was a direct result of my upbringing and I didn't need it anymore. That
I had control of my life now. That I'm resilient and capable of going through a fire and coming out on the other end, and that I don't have to forgive anyone for anything. That the only person I can rely on is myself.
Here I am on the other side of it all, through many twists and turns. I'm the first of my family to graduate high school, go to college, or go to graduate school. I'm now a professional scientist working on Alzheimer disease research and a keyboardist in a working band. I'm active in my community both in local politics and through volunteer work. Things are far from perfect. I still struggle with old emotions, behaviors and thought patterns. It’s taken many rituals and even daily effort sometimes, but I've achieved a level of happiness and fulfillment in life I never thought possible.
——————
There is no heaven of glory bright, and no hell where sinners roast. Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity! Choose ye this day, this hour, for no redeemer liveth! Say unto thine own heart, "I am my own redeemer." Stop the way of them that would persecute you. Let those who devise thine undoing be hurled back to confusion and infamy. Let them be as chaff before the cyclone and after they have fallen rejoice in thine own salvation. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully, "Who is like unto me? Have I not been too strong for mine adversaries? Have I not delivered MYSELF by mine own brain and body?" The Book of Satan - Anton Szandor LaVey submitted by SubjectivelySatan to satanism [link] [comments]
Teachers are being scammed in plain sight. Please don't let the suits take your money.
You have all seen the sleazy suits that come around to sell you on 403(b) plans.
If you want to argue that they aren't a scam then I will concede the point because that is subjective. Objectively speaking they are both an incredibly expensive product AND inferior to alternatives. I've written more in depth
here, but this is the short version.
CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING:
- 403(b) plans can charge up to 2 pct or more in fees and management costs.
- Some of the sleazy suits that come around to sell to you get a recurring commission based on every teacher they recruit. That's a lot of money. Which shows you how massively profitable they are.
- Don't believe me? Check out John Oliver's take on it yourself. Some of these plans cost $200,000 over their life time. That's money out of your pocket.
- 403(b) plans can literally and without exaggeration cost 100x an index fund strategy.
- Teacher's unions have no idea what they are doing when they allow these plans to be foisted on teachers.
- None of these suits explain the full costs or the better alternatives because they are not your fiduciaries. They have no obligation to advise you of your best financial options. They are salesmen selling an expensive inferior product.
WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF THE 403(b)? - You can write off the contributions from your taxes.
- Some employers have retirement schemes where they match your funds.
- Someone else manages your finances and the amount is automatically deducted from your check.
If your employer is matching your funds then you should contribute only up to the matched amount. If your employer is NOT matching your contributions then there is little reason to take advantage of these plans.
THE TRADITIONAL IRA: THE SUPERIOR OPTION Before you look at a 403(b) you should open up a traditional IRA and max out your contributions. You can put up to $6,000 a year and write that off your taxes.
But then YOU are responsible for investing your money and you probably have no idea how to do that. Great! No problem!
Warren Buffet, one of the worlds richest men, won a one million dollar bet that index funds would outperform, actively managed funds over ten years. It wasn't even close.
I checked the S and P 500 index fund fee and it was 0.015% vs 2.00% fee that many 403(b) plans charge. Remember that fee is COMPOUNDING. The 403(b) fees are over 100% more expensive! This can add up, and if you watch the Oliver video you can see that it can add up to over $200,000 over the life of your account.
DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial advisor. You should speak to one to make decisions about how to invest. If you are young you can allocate most of your money into funds. If you are older and reaching retirement you can have a more conservative strategy. Speak with a financial advisor who is a FIDUCIARY. Ask them outright if they are acting as your FIDUCIARY. The 403(b) salesmen are NOT FIDUCIARIES. Anyone your are NOT paying is unlikely to be a fiduciary. Remember that! In a couple hours you can set up a traditional IRA, have it automatically invest a certain amount of your money every month into an index fund. Set it and forget it until retirement. That's all. And it would mean way more money in your pocket and way less into these shady, sleazy wall street douchebags skimming across the top of your hard earned money and giving you an inferior product.
WHEN SHOULD YOU INVEST IN A 403(b) - If your employer is matching your funds then that's free money. Only put in the maximum matching amount.
- If you have so much spare money to invest after you have maxed out your IRA, HSA, and 529 plan if you have kids.
- If the 403(b) plan is as cheap as an index fund or other products they offer like life insurance are better than options you can get elsewhere. I can't stress this enough but get a good financial advisor who you pay and is a fiduciary to help you navigate this. They are much, much cheaper than the expensive 403(b) plans.
SHOULD YOU ACTIVELY MANAGE YOUR OWN INVESTMENTS Probably not! The safest thing to do is invest in index funds and dollar cost average which means automatic monthly purchases. You buy at the market highs and lows and over time you come out on top. After 30 years of this you should have a good nest egg. There's no emotion to it, don't pay attention to it. Don't be seduced by craziness like what's happening in the market. Don't gamble your life savings.
Again speak to a paid financial advisor who is a FIDUCIARY (I can't stress this enough). They can help you make a set it and forget it account which is a mix of funds like the S and P 500, Nasdaq and depending on your age, other stuff that may have lower risk.
You can make an account in one of the big three. I won't name them here because I am not shilling for any company just trying to help out my fellow teachers.
If you have any questions I will answer to the best of my ability. If there is something you want me to go more in depth on I can try and write a more in depth article about it.
DISCLAIMER: I am just a teacher like you guys. I am not a financial advisor nor do I have any formal training in finance. I don't want to see fellow teachers fall for, what imho, are scams.
EDIT 1: WHAT IF I ALREADY HAVE A 403(b) Easy! If you have opened an IRA account with one of the big three then contact them about
rolling over your 403(b) to an IRA. It's a simple process and you won't pay any taxes or penalties.
submitted by adamcaldoon to Teachers [link] [comments]
"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)
I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody. Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547 I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps.
https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T Intro
- "The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
- "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
- "For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
- "We're spread way too thin."
- "If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
- RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
- Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
- ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
- Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
- Widespread match fixing
- The Pandemic
- "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
- "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
- "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
- "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
- "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
- "It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
- RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
- He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.
CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association
"Who does this union really fucking serve?"
- RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
- He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
- He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
- He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
- Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
- RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
- Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
- "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
- He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
- "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
- He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
- "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
- He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
- He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
- He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
- He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
- RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
- "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
- "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
- "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
- "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
- He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
- He also says their rankings are a joke
- "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
- He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
- "Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission
"They have been put in an impossible position."
- RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
- "ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
- "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
- "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
- Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
- Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
- "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
- "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
- ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
- He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
- Also says more coaches being banned are coming
- He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
- ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
- "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
- "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
- "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
- RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
Stream Sniping
"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"
- RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
- On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
- "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
- He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
- He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
- The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
- "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
- He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
- "All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
- He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?
Match Fixing
"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."
- RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
- "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
- "Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
- Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
- Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
- They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
- "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
- "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
- RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
- "There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
- "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
- "It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
- "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
- He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
- "That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
- "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
- "I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."
North America
"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."
- RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
- There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
- He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
- RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
- He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
- He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
- He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
- They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
- When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
- "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
- He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
- He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
- He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
- He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
- He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
- He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
- He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
- Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
- RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
- RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."
Talent
"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."
- RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
- He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
- Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
- He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
- He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
- He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
- He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
- New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
- He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
- He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
- He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."
Valve
"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"
- Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
- Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
- In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
- RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
- He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
- RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
- A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
- RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
- RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
- RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
- Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
- They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
- RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
- Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
- He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
- Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
- RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
- "It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
- Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
- "Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
- "People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."
Closing Statements
"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."
- RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
- "We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
- "There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
- "How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
- "Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
- "The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
- He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
- He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
- "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
- "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
- He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
- "Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
- "This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
- "You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
- "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
- "Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
- "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
- "I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
- "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
- "I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."
submitted by Tharnite to GlobalOffensive [link] [comments]
WHY CANNABIS MARKET FOR 2021
The cannabis market right now is so similar to the start of the green energy market.. its nowhere near done being bullish. Save for some small dips, there will very likely be a huge bullish trend for 2021.
EVEN NASDAQ AGREES. I’ve posted my positions a
few times, and I’ll continue to do so. But this is my reasoning for investing in cannabis stocks in general for 2021.
- I've been a bull on cannabis since the democrats had a strong pro-cannabis platform. But what made me go balls deep into the market was that the UN changed its classification of cannabis. Countries follow the UN closely for guidance on their own classification of controlled substances. Congress has repeatedly cited the UN’s classification as one of the reasons for not changing it. Several countries immediately changed their stance on cannabis in response to this, including Israel, which In November 2020, announced that it was moving forward with a plan to legalize recreational cannabis nationally. “The country is aiming to implement recreational legalization within nine months, and even if there are delays, that means mid-to-late 2021.” (This is my reason for investing in Canadian cannabis companies, because they are already poised to expand internationally since its legal there nationwide)
- THE SENATE IS NOW BLUE! The Georgia runoffs were won by Democrats, and they can now swing the vote left with VP Harris. She promised it as part of her platform, so we know it will be prioritized. CHUCK SHUMER SPONSORED THE MORE ACT. HE WILL BE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER. IT WILL 100% BE PRIORITIZED BETWEEN HIM AND VP HARRIS.
- EVERYONE predicted beforehand that the republicans would win Georgia... everyone talked down decriminalization passing the house because of they believed it would NEVER pass the republican majority senate. But the left spent more than any senate race in history to encourage voters to go out and vote. Only once the race started did it become clear that the left had a chance. Then some gains from the surprise that they won. However the gains from 1/5 onwards definitely hasn’t been priced in for all the future legislation, because some of it will be completely new legislation that wasn’t possible to consider before without a blue senate. THIS HASN'T BEEN PRICED INTO THE MARKET YET.
- The government is broke post-COVID. There is a terrible image of the police. They don’t want to waste more resources on cannabis related crimes that would be fixed under decriminalization. And the tax revenue from decriminalization would be significant. Decriminalization (THE MORE ACT) opens up the borders to interstate-commerce and international import/export. This would all trickle down into Uncle Sam’s empty pockets.
- New York Governor Cuomo announced on Jan 6 his plan to legalize marijuana for adult use (right after New Jersey vote, as I anticipated in my last post) as part of his State of the State agenda. The next step is a ripple out on the North East. NY didn’t want to miss out on tax revenue, neither will any of the other states in the northeast within driving distance of NJ and NY. This is Cuomo’s third attempt in three years to legalize adult-use cannabis in the state; last year, Cuomo included a legalization proposal in his state budget, but the plan was ultimately cut in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Other ongoing state legislature:
- Rhode Island: Regulators have received 45 applications for six new medical cannabis dispensary licenses in the state. If all applicants meet the requirements for a license, six will randomly be selected in a lottery to operate retail locations in different regions across the state. Read more
- Missouri: Rep. Shamed Dogan has filed legislation that would place an adult-use cannabis legalization measure on the state’s 2022 ballot. Meanwhile, Missourians for a New Approach has announced plans for a separate 2022 ballot initiative after an unsuccessful signature campaign to get the issue before voters in 2020. Read more
- Alabama: Sen. Tim Melson plans to reintroduce a medical cannabis legalization bill this year. Medical cannabis legislation passed the Alabama Senate during the 2020 session, but failed to clear the House. Read more
- Illinois: Illinois lawmakers have proposed the creation of 75 new cannabis retail licenses to give disadvantaged and minority applicants a second chance at licensing following the controversial licensing lottery to issue an initial 75 dispensary licenses. A work group made up of lawmakers and members of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration met this week to finalize details of the bill, which will be introduced in a lame-duck session that starts Jan. 8, before new lawmakers are sworn in Jan. 13. Read more
- Minnesota: House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler is again renewing his push to legalize adult-use cannabis in the state, announcing plans to reintroduce a legalization bill this year. Winkler told WCCO that he sees “Senate leadership as being the number one obstacle,” but said that if lawmakers agreed to place an adult-use legalization initiative on Minnesota’s 2022 ballot, “it would pass overwhelmingly.” Read more
- Virginia: Del. Steve Heretick has reintroduced a bill to legalize adult-use cannabis. Heretick has proposed legislation related to decriminalization and legalization in the past, and this year’s bill would legalize the cultivation, sale and consumption of cannabis in the state. Read more
- Connecticut: Gov. Ned Lamont renewed his push for adult-use legalization during his State of the State address Jan. 6, announcing that it is a priority for the new legislative session. Connecticut’s 2021 legislative session opened Jan. 6, and Lamont, a Democrat, kicks off the session with increased majorities in the House and Senate, which could increase his chances of passing an adult-use legalization bill. Read more
Now that you understand why I’m going green, here’s my reasoning for my positions. TLRY (Tilray) - largest cannabis company in the world by revenue post merger. Will run out of Seattle and New York City. New York Legalization on top of senate turning blue is a big catalyst for TLRY.
- Merger hasn’t completed yet, and the merger happened before the senate went blue.. that was the gamble APHA was making, and they won. The sky is the limit now. When they merge, they will reduce expenses and be much more likely to post profitable quarters. (This is why mergers have so much hype; the sum is > than their parts because they can reduce operating expenses while maintaining revenue from the two companies)
- Tilray CEO Brendan Kennedy: “I think medical cannabis will be legal at the federal level, which means medical cannabis can cross state lines and be imported into the U.S., like we export cannabis from Canada and Portugal to about 15 countries now,” Kennedy said. “Anyone who thinks there’s a state-specific medical market is wrong.” As for the recreational market, Kennedy says the state-specific markets, with interstate trade banned, “are not going to last long.” Kennedy believes that cannabis will be distributed like alcohol and tobacco within two years’ time. That would require significant overhaul of US federal drug laws—and would significantly disrupt all US cannabis companies’ existing business models. Brendan Kennedy, the cannabis billionaire will step down as Tilray's chairman and CEO. Irwin D. Simon, Aphria's current chairman and CEO will take Kennedy's place.
- [On December 18, 2020, just three days after the U.S. Senate adopted the Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion Act (CMREA or the Act) (more on this below), the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA or the Administration) published in the Federal Register a final rule, “Controls To Enhance the Cultivation of Marihuana for Research in the United States” (Rule), which finally paves the way for DEA to issue additional licenses to grow “marihuana” (i.e., cannabis) for research purposes.](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/on-heels-of-senate-s-adoption-of-36129/)
GNLN (Greenlane Holdings) - One of the largest global sellers of premium cannabis accessories. Pax/JUUL/Volcano products. I’ve had Pax products, and although I prefer Arizer because of the affordability, I can’t deny Pax has quality products and is like the “iPhone” of vaporizers. I like their products, I like their branding. There’s lots of hype and loyalty, especially with their Volcano desktop vaporizer.
- Strong US brands.
- The main reason they did poorly was bad timing. They IPO’d during the year that JUULs started being banned. They’re actually at all those levels again. Theres a ton of upside potential.
- Market cap is ridiculously low for some really renown brands all because of the JUUL flavor pod ban. Everyone knows Pax, Volcano, and JUUL. But no one knows Greenlane because of the bad timing of their IPO and the subsequent JUUL flavor ban. It’s crazy. They’ve already broke all time high for the year. But I’m holding until they break 1B market cap.
- Recently became the exclusive distributor for the world's first gravity powered contactless water hookah.
- Overall i think too many people count it out just because of their IPO and subsequent decline in JUUL sales from the JUUL flavored pods ban. They definitely have the potential because of their strong branding and quality products. I’m betting on them having more high quality products in the future with equally loyal customers.
SNDL (Sundial Growers) - SNDL must close above $1 per share for 10 consecutive sessions by June 26, 2021 or it will be delisted from NASDAQ. People see this as a fear factor, I see this as “they will do anything necessary to reach $1 for a week so they won’t be delisted”.. IMHO reverse splitter probably isn’t on the table since they could have done that in 2020, but instead applied for a 6 month extension after announcing “alternative strategic investments”. We can already see this by their predatory loan SPAC spinoff.
- Rumors of a merger with CGC; SNDL also purchased a SPAC recently and entered an agreement with Zenabis, immediately claiming they defaulted. Turning that SPAC into predatory loan/debt repurchasing company. Imo if they want to complete a merger, it would be easy to sell ownership through that SPAC to the buyer.
- THEY RECENTLY WENT DEBT FREE by selling off unprofitable assets in the business. This means we are much more likely to see earnings in future quarters, and they are much more attractive for mergers.
- Because they are indoor growers, they are more likely to be bought up by a company in the consolidating Canadian cannabis market than fail all together. The amount of space licensed to grow cannabis in Canada is now heavily skewed toward outdoor cultivation instead of indoor for the first time, according to new data from Health Canada. A growing population of licenses for outdoor growers means that there aren’t as many indoor licenses being given out... If a company ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD wants to quickly expand into indoor growing OR into the west, they would have to purchase an existing company that has the license to quickly do so. This is WAY faster, and a guaranteed way to obtain a license rather than applying for one and waiting x amount of months and be rejected for some requirement that wasn’t met.
- From my own experience, outdoor cannabis is subpar quality to indoor grown cannabis. So a growing market for outdoor cannabis doesn’t necessarily mean its better... it is likely just cheaper. I would imagine a high quality “craft cannabis” company would want to purchase SNDL, or an existing outdoor growing company that wants to quickly expand to indoor grown cannabis. With this being a Canadian company, there’s a chance a company in another country like Israel would be interested in purchasing it in the near future.
PLNHF (Planet 13 Holdings) - Biggest tourist trap in Las Vegas if you’re a stoner, casual smoker, or just wanting to try it. From my own experience, I think they will continue to be successful. If I went around the US trying other brands I’d probably be more confident in putting 5-10% of my portfolio into those picks or choosing to not include them lol. Like for example, I used to have Curaleaf. But there's tons of bad feedback on Curaleaf, a friend has tried it said the nug is really subpar quality and if I tried their nug I’d probably confirm that I wouldn’t want to invest in them. With PLNHF, i’ve seen the ambience and tried the product myself. It’s definitely a lot of hype price wise, but still quality. This is my own bias showing, but I still think they’ve got solid fundamentals and excellent location/strong US branding.
I’m well aware of other good stocks like GTBIF, CRLBF, SSPK, TCNNF, GRWG.. but these stocks
haven’t been swinging as hard in response to pro-cannabis news. E.g.
TLRY, SNDL, GNLN swung more than 20% some days from pro-cannabis news...I will likely reduce my current positions shortly after inauguration, after some news about the timeline for cannabis legislation, and diversify my positions more between these other good picks.
2021 is the year of cannabis boys submitted by DerbDsoul to pennystocks [link] [comments]
what's the biggest gamble in the world video
The scale of the decarbonisation challenge to meet the Paris Agreement is underplayed in the public arena. It will require precipitous emissions reductions within 40 years and a new carbon sink on the scale of the ocean sink. Even then, the world is extremely likely to overshoot. A catastrophic failure of policy, for example, waiting another decade for transformative policy and full ... Monte Carlo is one of the best places to gamble in the world. Along with Las Vegas, it’s world-famous for its casino and high roller lifestyle. You can’t go anywhere without seeing a fancy car drive past or a superyacht parked in the harbor. The Casino de Monte Carlo is perhaps the most famous casino on Earth. What’s the biggest gamble a team has taken and lost on? Pretty self-explanatory. A team mortgaging their future for a World Series, signing a high risk/high reward player, etc. 133 comments. share. save. hide. report. 93% Upvoted. This thread is archived. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. 11) Gambling tycoon Kerry Packers Coin Toss = The Biggest Bet ever paid out in Gambling Terms. While business wagers and hedge fund bets such as the 2008 CDS (Credit Default Swap) Shorting was over a Billion dollars paid out on a single wager when it comes to gambling that tile goes to casino tycoon Kenny Packer. Top 10 Biggest Casinos In The World Ever. ... Share this: Places To Gamble. Places To Gamble. Las Vegas ATMs: How To Get Cash Out For Free. May 13, 2020 — 7 min read. Places To Gamble. What’s ... In this article we are going to list the 15 largest gambling companies in the world. Click to skip ahead and jump to the 10 largest gambling companies in the world. Gambling is addictive, just ... What’s the biggest bet ever placed? William Lee Bergstrom (1951 – February 4, 1985 born in Austin, Texas) commonly known as The Suitcase Man or Phantom Gambler, was a gambler and high roller known for placing the largest bet in casino gambling history at the time amounting to $777,000 ($2.36 million present day amount) at the Horseshoe Casino, which he Harold Kutner, lord of the world's biggest supply chain, has received a few unexpected wake-up calls over the last few months. The first came last Nov. 3 at 3 a.m. local time in his Tokyo hotel room. Question: What’s the biggest gamble you’ve ever taken? “Taking a bus trip in Bolivia along what is apparently the most dangerous road in the world.” —Jacob Wilson, Shearman & Sterling LLP “Quitting my job in Montreal and moving to this city for this guy [Matthew].” —Christine Mainville, Henein and Associates The left-leaning Guardian was more circumspect, leading its front page with the words “Small Island” and describing Brexit as “the biggest gamble in a generation”.
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